A Randomized Controlled Trial of an Integrated Brain, Body, and Social Intervention for Children With ADHD

Abstract

Objective: This study evaluated the efficacy of an Integrated Brain, Body, and Social (IBBS) intervention for children with ADHD. Treatment consisted of computerized cognitive remediation training, physical exercises, and a behavior management strategy. Method: Ninety-two children aged 5 to 9 years with ADHD were randomly assigned to 15 weeks of IBBS or to treatment-as-usual. Primary outcome measures included blinded clinician ratings of ADHD symptoms and global clinical functioning. Secondary outcome measures consisted of parent and teacher ratings of ADHD and neurocognitive tests. Results: No significant treatment effects were found on any of our primary outcome measures. In terms of secondary outcome measures, the IBBS group showed significant improvement on a verbal working memory task; however, this result did not survive correction for multiple group comparisons. Conclusion: These results suggest that expanding cognitive training to multiple domains by means of two training modalities does not lead to generalized improvement of ADHD symptomatology.

Keywords: ADHD; Good Behavior Game (GBG); computerized cognitive remediation training (CCRT); physical exercise; randomized controlled trial.

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Dr. Jinxia Dong is a co-founder and holds equity in C8 Sciences, which developed and sells the brain training program evaluated by the research described in this paper. All of the remaining authors have declared that they have no competing or potential conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1

CONSORT 2010 flow diagram. aTwo participants returned for follow-up visit and were included in the analysis.